Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Poverty is......

Poverty is....
Having to work illegally.
It's being a child, beneath the hot sun, pleading for money for your candy, alone, working into the night.
It's spending your days bent over a blanket of products on the side of the street, ready to run when the police come by.
It's pulling the gold watch off the wrist of a stranger so you can eat, and feeling the guilt and regret at night when you can't sleep.
It's tealing from the slow-moving elderly woman who you hope won't recognize you.
It's having to do whatever you can to stay alive, a thief of survival.

Poverty is....
Losing your family.
It's watching your child die from tuberculosis when the cure was a cost you couldn't afford.
It's leaving your home as a scared young girl because if you don't go find work, no one can eat.
It's being a kid so long on the streets that by now you can't remember the faces of your parents.
It's seeing your child slowly leave home to make a home in the steets, because there's nothing to offer him where you are.
It's coming to the city, searching, holding a picture of your son who has run away, asking everyone for his whereabouts, and returning
home alone.
It's watching your father beat your mother, your mother beat you, and knowing inside that they lost your soul a long time ago.

Poverty is...
Being hungry.
It's asking for the half-eaten piece of pizza from a stranger, begging for the half-gone ice-cream cone, stealing the drink from a
stranger's hand, because you're living on hand-outs.
It's selling candy but never getting to eat a piece.
It's eating one meal, the same meal, every day.
It's eating from the garbage, but living on empty.

Poverty is.....
Being out-casted and misunderstood.
It's being a street kid, dirty, not allowed to go into a restaurant with your friend on your birthday.
It's receiving pitied looks and being given spare change by people who think they're being generous or perhaps encouraging a bad habit.
It's walking with your friend in open daylight, and getting beaten by the police because you're a child that doesn't have a home, and the
police are taking "Preventative Action".
It's standing on a street corner, dressed for a night for sale, your body displayed, the men touching you, people calling after you, telling you you're someone you're not, that you're worth less than you are-all so that you will be able to feed your family.

Poverty is....
Needing escape, but there's nowhere to go.
It's finding solace in a bag of glue, so that you can hide from life in the paradise of being high.
It's being abused by your husband, being abused by your wife, being abused by your parents, yelling and crying and afraid, all in a room just big enough for three twin beds to be pushed together.
It's wanting to leave your work, because you're being paid nothing and barely surviving, but knowing there's nowhere out there that's
going to pay you more.
It's cutting deep wounds into your own forearm so that the physical pain you feel will provide relief from the emotional pain that
threatens to push you under.

Poverty is...
Not having.
It's about avoiding the competition between who has a better body, the better warddrobe, the better car, the better house, the better job.
It's about worrying about loving your family, providing for those you care about, and spending time with the people who matter in your
life.
It's leaning on one-another, depending on your community, knowing more than your neighbors' names.
It's holding lightly to things, and giving them away without regret to someone who matters, or maybe to someone you don't even know.
It's sharing.
It's seeing life, living life, for what it is, without the stuff.
It's letting the lack of things create a space for something else, that is, until the not having makes no space for anything but suffering.
It's remembering that poverty can be different for different people, and that either having too much or not having at all can look awfully
similar.
Both can lead to death of the body and the soul.

Excerpt from Nothing But a Thief by Danielle Speakman


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